There's a $50,000 Contest for Telling Ships and Icebergs Apart

Is there a giant iceberg heading for the coast of Newfoundland right now? A lot hinges on the answer. Cargo ships, oil tankers, and cruise ships enter and leave the island’s ports every day, and at any moment an iceberg from Greenland can drift into the same waters. Being able to predict when those icebergs will appear is so valuable that the Centre for Cold Ocean Resource Engineering (C-CORE) and Norwegian energy company Statoil are offering a $50,000 prize to anyone who can invent a better way to spot them in satellite images.

Satellite images server as a better way to spot icebergs than any that were available just a few decades ago, but it's still not perfect. A bright spot in the ocean could mean an iceberg is heading for the port. But it could also be a tanker that got picked up by the satellite or a whale relaxing in the waves. It’s difficult but important to be able to tell the difference.

“The issue is there are lots of things that show up in a satellite image besides icebergs. There are ships and marine life,” said C-CORE Vice President Desmond Power to CBC. “So we need to be able to understand what each target looks like.”

The challenge posted by C-CORE and Statoil features 5,000 satellite images, some of which are icebergs, and gives teams around the world an opportunity to develop software to classify them. Right now there are over 1,200 teams competing with over two months to go in the contest.

If you want to try for a shot at the prize money, you can find the rules and instructions to enter here.

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